Cloudbusters Model Airplane Club take to the sky above Flint's Broome Park

FLINT, MI – The sky above Broome Park in Flint could barely contain the vast amount of model airplanes soaring through the air Sunday, July 5 as the Cloudbusters Model Airplane Club hosted its fifth annual airplane contest and picnic.

Cloudbusters, a Michigan model aviation club that has been flying model airplanes since 1939, set up the flying area in the open fields of the park and spent the day teaching visitors new to the hobby what it's all about and trying out new model designs.

cloudbusters flint 2014The sky above Broome Park in Flint could barely contain the vast amount of model airplanes soaring through the air as the Cloudbusters Model Airplane Club hosted its fifth annual airplane contest and picnic Sunday, July 6.

New to the club, Clinton Township resident Bud Marzolf wound up his hand-made free-flight airplane as he prepared to unleash it on the sky.

Planes are typically judged on how long they stay in the air and not how far they go.

Many of the hobbyists in the park said the best kind of plane they can build is one that will simply hover in the air for as long as possible without going far so they won't have to chase the model down when it lands.

"I've had a few fly as Applewood Chevrolet from here," said club member Chris Boehm, of Grand Blanc, as he watched one of his planes disappear into the horizon.

While there are kits people buy to build these shrunken down marvels of modern aviation, many of the avid flyers choose to download schematics off the internet and make theirs from scratch.

Many of the more intricate hand-made models did exceedingly well, hanging in the air for what seemed like an eternity.

Battle Creek hobbyist George Bredehoft said he has been building semi-to-scale models of airplanes and flying them since the '80s.

"I've been coming to Flint to fly for years. This park has a lot of space," He said.

Along with the rubber-band powered and hand toss planes, Control Line planes constrained to steel cables soared trough the sky as flyers controlled them from the ground.

"You fly these until they run out of fuel," said Troy flyer Bob Morse. "You get about five minutes of flight time for four and a half ounces of fuel."

As the day progressed, more flyers arrived at the park, ready to show what their models could do. But as the flyers showed, the natural enemy of the models showed up as well: the wind.

When the wind picked up, it sent many planes flying off into the distance or into the ground after a brief few seconds in the air.

But with the wind did have a benefit, ushering in warm air that created thermal pockets that sent planes back into the sky to continue their flights.

"Sometimes, just when you think it's coming down, it hits a thermal and gets pushed back into the air," Boehm said. "They really help add more flight time when you need it."